LAX95LA237 · Aerostar S-77A
Aerostar S-77A · Accident: hard landing
From 2Q3 · DAVIS WOODLAND, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95LA237
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Aerostar S-77A
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar S-77
- Category
- Balloon
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N6317U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2Q3 · DAVIS WOODLAND, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Descent, excessive
- Pilot in command › Flare, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS LANDING THE BALLOON WHEN IT BEGAN TO DESCEND RAPIDLY. THE BASKET CONTACTED THE GROUND, TIPPED FORWARD, AND THREE PASSENGERS WERE EJECTED. AFTER CONTACTING THE GROUND WITH THE BASKET, THE BALLOON CONTINUED BACK INTO THE AIR. WINDS WERE REPORTED BETWEEN 10 AND 15 MPH AT THE TIME. THE PILOT REPORTED THAT SHE HAD OBTAINED A WEATHER BRIEFING AND BRIEFED THE PASSENGERS ON WINDY LANDINGS. THE BALLOON MANUFACTURER STATED THAT THERE ARE NO ESTABLISHED WIND LIMITS (LAUNCH OR LANDING) FOR OPERATION OF THE BALLOON, AND THAT OPERATIONAL WIND LIMITATIONS ARE AT THE DISCRETION OF THE PILOT, BASED ON EXPERIENCE AND ABILITY.
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudgement of the balloon's excessive rate-of-descent in a high wind landing and her inadequate remedial action to correct the condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95LA237
- Event ID
- 20001207X03991
- Case number
- LAX95LA237
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b6628a8a9ed12fe64fd6690628280bf20945c1e594d3e495c26f988439c704d8; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:43:10.153Z.